


Help! My Date's a Spy

by Tonight_At_Noon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/M, First Dates, Sexual Content, Violence, just an unrealistic mess, you know how it goes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:08:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28684593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonight_At_Noon/pseuds/Tonight_At_Noon
Summary: A lover of espionage thrillers, Darcy is intrigued when her date fits the description of every leading spy from her favorite novels.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis
Comments: 5
Kudos: 102





	Help! My Date's a Spy

**Author's Note:**

> We all know the drill. I don't know how this spiraled into what it is. It ended up having so many more feelings than I expected it to. But here you go. Excuse any and all typos/mistakes. I have literally just finished this and am now uploading it. 
> 
> Enjoy.

_ hello, i love you, won't you tell me your name _

"hello, i love you" | the doors

He fit the criteria well. Too well, in her mind. Too well for it to not be a coincidence. He had the swooping dark hair. Perfectly tailored suit. Bespoke, even. Blue eyes that pierced every object he looked at. (She was afraid the bread basket their server had placed on their table wouldn’t be able to free itself from his hypnotic gaze.) 

And those lips. She could almost see all the phantom kisses those lips had given and taken. They were pink, the color of a raspberry stain, but she bet they tasted like a deep red wine. Earthy and rich, capable of telling stories from around the world. 

It was his lips that sold her on the idea. Her date was most definitely a top-level government spy. Which government, she couldn’t quite put her finger on. He didn’t speak with a detectable accent. Though she supposed he would make a piss poor spy if he did. The country to which he swore allegiance didn’t matter. Not really. They were all described the same way in each of the worn espionage thrillers bulging out of her bookshelves. 

The hair. The suit. The eyes. Those lips. 

She sussed Bucky wasn’t a real name the moment he appeared on her dating app. To be honest, she was wildly surprised when he showed up at the restaurant looking the exact same as his profile picture. It was the only photograph available on the app. Which, thinking back, was a red flag in itself. Thinking back, she was wildly surprised that she agreed to meet him in the first place. Did she have a death wish she wasn’t aware of? 

No. Not a death wish. Something much simpler—an espionage kink. It didn’t matter that there was a chance this guy—this handsome, suave, sexy guy—wasn’t a real life spy. If she thought he was, pretended he was, the sex would be mind-blowing regardless of all that other stuff. 

“You keep looking at me.” 

His voice startles her. She jerks, and the silverware beside her appetizer plate clinks together. No longer staring at the bread basket, his attention is fully on her. She feels like a fish caught on a hook. Dry land, the fisherman’s hard face, the threat of being devoured, have stolen her breath. 

“You’re not one of those guys that think a woman shouldn’t look them in the eye, are you?” She’s shocked at the words that flow out of her mouth like water breaking through a verbal dam. She scrambles to seal the barrier before it washes Bucky away. “I mean—no, that was so rude. I’m sorry.”

Except he doesn’t seem to be taking it too harshly. He’s smiling. It’s the first smile he’s sported since arriving. And it’s beautiful. His entire face softens. His eyes go from the color of a storming ocean to a springtime sky. “I only meant,” he says, smiling, and her heart thumps uncomfortably against her ribs, “that I keep waiting for you to say something. Usually when someone’s that locked in, they want to talk.”

“Oh.” Now she’s smiling. And laughing. Snorting—like a pig hearing its first joke. “I do want to talk to you. Of course I do.”

“So…talk.”

Talk. An easy request to fulfill. Find something light to discuss. 

“You’re a spy.” Darcy blurts the statement. The dam is irreparably damaged. 

She’s about to apologize again. Explain that she hasn’t been on a date in almost two years. Make an excuse, lie about a friend being in the hospital—she’s got one hand halfway in her bag, reaching for her phone—but Bucky’s eyes do this thing. This glimmering thing. They widen ever so slightly, by half a centimeter, and a gloss washes over them. 

And his lips. They part for a nanosecond, revealing the dark pink cavern of his mouth before sealing themselves shut. 

The clattering of the restaurant goes silent in Darcy’s numb ears. All she hears is her own quickening breath, the magnified throbbing of her heart, the hot rush of her blood. This is her entire book collection come to life. 

No. No, this is a dream. It has to be a dream.

“You are,” Darcy rasps. 

Bucky leans forward. Darcy instinctively, pulled by her carnal desire, does the same. “You’re in danger,” he says lowly, his voice a rumbling earthquake. “I’m here to make sure you’re kept safe.”

“Danger…” She frowns. “But, why?”

His electric eyes spark around the room. “There’s no time to explain”—

—“How are we finding the appetizer?” their waiter asks, appearing beside Darcy. 

“Delicious,” she says, offering the tall man a half smile that she hopes doesn’t look as wild as it feels. 

“Are we ready to choose an entree?”

Darcy shakes her head. “No, thank you, we’re not ready yet.”

“Oh,” says the waiter, his eyes narrowing, his smile growing sinister, “but I insist.”

Feeling something press against her ribcage, Darcy peers down and is greeted by the sight of a sleek black gun. 

In a lot of those books she loves, the woman flails when confronted with a weapon. The older the publication date, the more flailing there is. The man, the spy, must intervene and diffuse the situation before kicking the bad guy’s ass. 

Modern spy thrillers are less about the damsel in distress, but the women are never perfectly at ease with a knife at their throat or gun in their face. Their minds race with terrified thoughts. Fears that they will never see their parents again. Never achieve their dream. Never kiss the man they have fallen in love with. The man responsible for her situation. 

Darcy is neither of these characters. She does not bubble up and pop, spurting hysteria. And she doesn’t sit there forlornly musing about the life she will never live if the gun two inches from her heart goes off. Her mind is blank. Totally empty. Drained of all thought and feeling, as if her brain has shut off in self preservation. 

It isn’t until Bucky kicks the seat of her chair and sends her flying backwards does she register that this is not one of her fantasies. Her head slams against the carpeted floor, and her napkin blankets her face. Tearing the cloth away, she catches sight of Bucky leaping out of his chair just as their waiter (who so clearly is not a waiter) pulls the trigger of his gun. A bang echoes through the building, and the patrons scream as glass shatters across the room. 

Bleary-eyed, Darcy rolls over and gets her feet, stumbling away from the scene unfolding in front of her. 

Bucky, her date, her definitely-a-spy date, punching their waiter, their definitely-also-a-spy waiter, in his jaw. There’s a crack, the distinct noise of bones shattering, and the waiter stumbles back. Blood pours from his mouth. But he isn’t done. They’re never done after just one punch. Staggering forward, the red-painted server crouches like a footballer ready to tackle. He lunges, sweeping Bucky off of his feet. The pair land on the floor. 

Darcy watches Bucky struggle through the haze. She watches the waiter smile like a super villain, splattering blood on Bucky’s white button-up. She can’t let this happen. This—the defeat of the good guy. She won’t.

Guided by gratuitous vanity and a minor God complex, Darcy reaches for the plate nearest her piled high with steaming pasta in a meaty red sauce. She rushes towards the battling brutes.

“Hey,” she calls. The men look towards her. Darcy smiles. “Order up.” 

She propels her arm with all of the force she can muster, zapping every cell within her of its energy, and she smashes the hot plate against the waiter-spy’s skull. The plate shatters. Burning pasta snakes around the man’s neck and head as the pieces of the plate fly in all directions. The shard left in Darcy’s hand keeps going down until it pierces the man’s skin. 

He yells out, a blood-curdling scream, just as his blood spurts upwards, splashing across Darcy’s face and dress. Beneath him, Bucky catches her eye. He anchors her in place, his face marred with scratches, his skin around left eye puffed and bruised, and tells her without speaking that everything—everything—is okay. 

** *…* **

Home was a meaningless word to Darcy Lewis just two hours ago. She had never stayed anywhere long enough for a building or a room to belong to her. But unlocking her front door and entering her apartment still coated in blood and meat sauce, still buzzing like a live wire, still confused and in shock, feels like coming home. Like entering the safest sanctuary on earth. 

She could kiss the floor. She would, if she weren’t aware of just how many times her aged cat had pissed on it. 

This is home. This is not a restaurant where an evil dude has pretended to be a waiter in order to kill her for the, according to Bucky, case documents on her computer detailing her boss’ evidence for an upcoming trial. 

She drags Bucky to the bathroom and sits him on the toilet lid. Silently, she wipes at his cuts with an alcohol-soaked flannel. He doesn’t wince. The only indication of pain is in his eyes—the eyes boring into her own. His pupils dilate and contract each time she presses against a different scrape. Their color is back to an ocean caught beneath a storming cluster of clouds. 

“You’re a mess,” she whispers, dabbing the cloth against his eyebrow. 

He exhales, and the breath is accompanied by a small puff of laughter. And she shouldn’t be (she really shouldn’t be), but she is burning on the inside. Burning for him. Her blood is nearly at a boil. Each time she dares lock eyes with him, she has to stop herself from collapsing into him. 

“We both are,” he points out. Slowly, he lifts his hand to his mouth. Pulling his index finger out from between his lips, he touches her cheek, and the touch is like pure fire licking her face. 

She read the _Fifty Shades_ trilogy for a book club back in college. Out of the entire group, she despised the books the most. She especially hated a car chase sequence that ended in adrenaline-fueled sex in a sports car. 

_Who knew almost dying was an aphrodisiac_ , or some bullshit. How unrealistic. How stupid. Sex in the spy thrillers she read was passionate, yes, but not ever the result of near death experiences. For Darcy, those scenes cheapen the relationship between the spy and his Bond girl. 

It never sat right with her. It was like the author was exploiting their female characters even more than usual. 

Bucky’s finger glides from the tip of her cheek to the corner of her mouth, and the universe clicks into place. Dropping the flannel, Darcy grips Bucky’s jaw and kisses him. She claws at his skin, pulling him closer to her, fearing he will never be close enough to her. And just as he is supposed to Bucky responds with ferocity. He wraps his arms around her waist. Yanking her between his legs, Darcy presses into him, rubbing, and feels a groan rise in his throat. She swallows the noise. Every part of him becomes a part of her. 

Bucky, if that is his real name, picks her up and carries her to the bed at the back corner of her studio apartment. Breathlessly, wordlessly, they strip each other of barriers until they are wearing only rusty blood stains. 

“So many scars,” she says as they kneel atop her sheets. 

“I’ve been doing this a long time,” he explains. “I know it’s not pretty.”

“What are you talking about?” she says, wearing the ghost of a smile. “They’re beautiful.”

She traces the puckered skin on his chest and stomach, following the lines to his thighs. Daringly, Darcy replaces her finger with her mouth. She kisses the marks as he swells under her wet touch. 

Pushing him down, she straddles his hips and envelopes him. He is a steel rod inside of her, burning her from the inside. He breathes into her and she breathes out fire. 

Bending down, Darcy captures his lips and they move together as if they have done this countless times before. As if they were written in the stars.


End file.
